CountersteerYour true stories of good and bad things that happen in cars.

Above is the 1988 Pontiac Firebird GTA Notchback. Yes, it came from the factory looking like that.

Styling in the ‘80s was a little bit on the extreme side, with cars either going radically all-in for aerodynamic efficiency or not. Either your car looked like a brick (take a gander at a Chevy Monte Carlo, for instance) or it looked like a wedge of cheese (gaze upon the beauty of an early Fiero or something). On one side you had a very straight, reactionary, traditional style. On the other you had a slavish adherence to science and the future. There wasn’t a lot in between.

Except you did, very briefly, have this one-year-only Firebird.

You could only get this package on the sporty GTA trim, and it replaced the standard car’s fastback rear glass with an upright window and a long fiberglass trunk. The rear seats and spoiler also got swapped out, as GTANotchback.com helpfully explains.

GM built fewer than a thousand of these cars, almost completely lost to history. It was a car kind of out of its own time, easily forgotten.